The Queen of Blood

by Sarah Beth Durst

  CHAPTER 19

  Last-minute advice was never a good idea, but Ven couldn’t help it. He felt like a mother hen whose innocent chick had just been breaded and seasoned. “Don’t say you think you’ll be a great queen. Don’t tell her you’re ready. Or eager. Or anything that even vaguely implies that you’d be happy if she were dead. She’s sensitive about that.” He adjusted the ribbons draped around Daleina’s neck, one for each spirit to show she’d demonstrated mastery, and he fussed with a string that dangled from one, nicking off the strand with his knife.

  Daleina held still while he circled her, checking for anything out of place that could be misconstrued as disrespectful to Queen Fara. Daleina had been dressed by the palace caretakers in a bead-encrusted gown that looked heavier than his armor. Her hair had been expertly woven into braids so complicated they rivaled the knots that solo climbers used to secure climbs up unproven trees. He’d been forced to wear an equally ridiculously elaborate sash that supposedly told the history of Renthia in embroidery. He felt pity for whatever artisan had been commissioned to spend years sewing tiny depictions of queens and champions on one stretch of fabric. But he hadn’t argued, not this time. With Sata, he’d been able to insist on just his plain leather armor, but that had been a long time ago, when he’d been a different man.

  “Don’t mention the messages. You don’t know about them. In fact, it might be wise if you don’t talk about what happened in North Garat. But don’t lie if she asks about it. In fact, don’t lie at all. You can compliment her, if you like, but make sure it sounds sincere. She has people fawning over her all the time and can tell the difference between a genuine compliment and flattery.”

  “Champion Ven?” Daleina twisted so she faced him as he paced.

  “Yes?”

  “Relax. Please.”

  He winced. He was a seasoned warrior. Yet here he was, displaying nerves like an illiterate schoolchild called to recite the alphabet in front of his entire village.

  “You believed in me when you chose me. You believed in me when I was blind. Believe in me again now.”

  He wanted to tell her it wasn’t her. He did believe in her, or he would if he could break her of her habit of calling only weak spirits. She was skilled enough to handle the powerful ones, if she was alert and careful and focused and used her redirection techniques rather than straight coercion. Sata had been skilled too, though. . . . He realized he never talked to Daleina about her. It was too painful. But maybe that was a mistake. He opened his mouth to tell her he believed in her just as much as he’d believed in Sata, but the audience chamber door clanked open. Three of the palace guards strode through and halted in a line. Shoulders thrown back, chests puffed out, they stared straight ahead—traditional honor-guard pose, which was an improvement over the reception he had expected. His last brush with the palace guards had not been exactly respectful. He recalled breaking a few ribs, possibly an arm. Certainly a nose. He studied these faces and didn’t see any he recognized. Obviously, they knew him—the gatekeeper had taken their names when they presented themselves—but no one seemed to be holding a grudge, at least not outwardly.

  There was a possibility that Fara meant to lift his exile during this audience. After all, he’d never revealed her secret, regardless of whether she was hunting traitors or losing control. By training Daleina, he were merely doing his duty, the same as all the other champions.

  He tamped down the hope, having tasted disappointment so many times before.

  And yet I still want it so much. I am a fool.

  In unison, the guards pivoted, stomped their heels hard, and then marched forward. He shooed Daleina after them. He matched her pace, automatically adopting a guard’s posture. Daleina’s chin was lifted, her shoulders back, and her mouth was moving, as if she were practicing a speech or giving herself encouragement or both. She looked so very young, and he wondered if he should have insisted on training her longer and waiting for the next cycle of trials. He wasn’t sure she was ready to be on her own yet. She still lacked perfect depth perception, and she hadn’t been able to repeat her feat with the castle-like spires in that village. She credited the power of the spirits more than her own skill, which was a problem—an heir needed confidence. Maybe he should have been praising her more instead of constantly pushing her. . . . “You do have the skills,” Ven told her, softly. He knew the guards could hear, but he didn’t think his voice carried beyond them. She shot him a small smile, and he saw the nervousness in her eyes, churning like a river in springtime. Her technique was near flawless, and she was a quick thinker, able to improvise. Often the most powerful failed—they relied too much on brute strength and never had to worry about strategy. And eventually even the most powerful met a force more powerful, and if they couldn’t think and adapt—if they didn’t understand that power sometimes wasn’t enough, that only queens were strong enough and even the strongest heir could lose a battle of pure power . . .

  Daleina will do well, he told himself for the hundredth time, and then he scolded himself. You’re doing it again. Stop being such a mother hen.

  They followed the guards through empty, silent halls that spiraled toward the center of the tree. They saw and heard no one else, which made it feel as if they were the only ones in the palace. Even their own footsteps felt muffled.

  Lithe fire spirits jumped from candle to candle. Behind them, the hall plunged into darkness. Ahead a doorway was wreathed in the light from the bodies of dozens of fire spirits. Ven’s hand itched to sit on the hilt of his sword. Fara hadn’t always been so ostentatious in her displays of power. He tried not to flinch as they walked through the doorway, under the beady, hungry gaze of the tiny spirits. Each one writhed like a flame, but none left their post.

  In the throne room water spirits bathed the copper-coated walls in waterfalls that trickled into pools. Each pool was crowned with water lilies, forced by spirits to grow inside, away from the sun. Two air spirits flanked the queen’s dais, their wings beating fast so that they hovered in midair, holding the train of her veil or gown or whatever. He didn’t know what the name was for that part of a dress, but he did know that Queen Fara had sharpened into a woman even more beautiful than the one in his memory. She rivaled a statue, chiseled and smoothed by a master artist, and wore a serene expression that had his instincts screaming, Trap, trap, trap!

  Except he couldn’t figure out who it was a trap for or why. So he kept walking forward, his own face schooled into as blank an expression as he could manage.

  Their procession reached the dais, and the guards split to either side of the queen, while Ven and Daleina knelt on one knee and bowed their heads.

  “Your names,” Queen Fara commanded.

  He’d told Daleina to speak for them, in hopes it would keep Fara’s mind off her anger with him and on the candidate, where it belonged. “Champion Ven and Candidate Daleina from Greytree.”

  Silently, Ven cursed. He hadn’t told her not to mention her birth village. It was traditional, yes, but not required. He hoped that Fara didn’t recognize the name. Keeping his head down, he resisted the urge to peek and check her expression. This could all end very poorly, very quickly.

  “Rise, Champion Ven and Candidate Daleina from Greytree.”

  He rose, head still bent, hands folded respectfully in front of him. Daleina had worked hard to reach this moment. He was determined not to ruin it for her.

  “Tell me, Candidate Daleina, do you believe you are ready to be queen?”

  There it was, so quickly, the trick question. He’d warned her. Had she listened?

  “No, Your Majesty. I’m not.”

  And that was not the right answer either. Maybe he should have been more specific.

  But Daleina wasn’t done talking. “But I am ready for the trials.”

  “The trials are to determine your readiness to be queen, should the need arise. If you are not ready to be queen, then you cannot be ready for the trials.”

  “Were you ready
?” Daleina asked.

  For an instant, Ven stopped breathing. This was not a moment he could help with swords or words, and he hated that. Raising his eyes, he stole a glimpse of Queen Fara. Her face was smooth, unreadable, and perfect, as if she’d never smiled, never laughed, never cried, never felt warmth or passion or release, when he knew for a fact that she mewed like a kitten when he . . . Deliberately, he pushed those thoughts out of his head and fixed his eyes on her face, not on the line of beads that teased her neckline. She was the queen.

  And besides, she hated him.

  “No one has ever asked me that before,” Queen Fara said, in a voice that implied that no one ever should. He heard the steel in it, as clear as if a guard had drawn a sword, but Daleina didn’t seem to hear it.

  “Did you ever doubt yourself?” Daleina pressed on. “Were you afraid? Did you have people who meant so much to you that you’d die rather than disappoint them? Or did you do it for yourself, because you knew you could? Did you ever wonder what your life would have been like if you didn’t take this route? Did you ever miss what you’d lost, what you never even knew you’d miss, what you never knew you were losing?”

  He rolled his eyes skyward and counted slowly to ten. He’d never wanted to gag someone so badly in his life. She chose now to explore her emotions? Now? She was supposed to be convincing Queen Fara that she was capable, dependable, and most of all strong enough. He’d hoped that visiting her family would provide the last bit of encouragement by reminding her of why she did this, the people she’d sworn to protect. Not turn her into a philosopher.

  He may have miscalculated.

  “I have never felt fear or doubt,” the queen said. And then she laughed—a sound so unexpected that he jerked backward. “Oh my, candidates are so very young. Of course I felt fear and doubt. Only idiots don’t, and the throne will not tolerate idiots. Go, Candidate Daleina, tell your loved ones that you will be taking the trials. And Champion Ven, stay. I wish to speak with you.”

  He stayed as if he were rooted to the floor in the same way as the throne was rooted to the dais, while one of the guards escorted Daleina out of the throne room. She’d passed the interview! He should be elated. But as he listened as the footsteps receded, he was far from jubilant.

  “Leave us,” Queen Fara told the guards.

  “My exile prohibits a private audience,” he reminded her.

  “I’m the queen.”

  “Given how our last audience went, I’d prefer a witness—for my own safety if not yours.” He wondered if he should have tacked on an apology or other flowery language. He met her eyes and tried to look as unmovable as a boulder. It was a look he had some practice with.

  “As you wish.” She waved the guards to the opposite side of the throne room, and then she glided off the dais, approaching him. She circled him, as if she were a buyer and he were a prize horse. “You look well, Ven.”

  “You look exquisite. But you know that.”

  A faint hint of a smile touched her lips. Not enough to curve them, but enough to make a dimple appear on one cheek. “Your candidate is pretty as well. Greytree? Really, Ven? Did you think I wouldn’t recognize the name?”

  Inwardly, he winced. Of course she recognized it. “Believe it or not, it was a coincidence. Or partially one, since her origin did shape her. Still, I chose her without knowing her past.”

  Fara shook her head. “You simply are not subtle enough to play at politics. Does she know you’re using her?”

  Ven bristled. “I’m training her.”

  “As a weapon, a figurehead, or a martyr?”

  “Your Majesty, it’s my duty—”

  “You know what I like best about you, Ven?” Stopping in front of him, she trailed her fingertip down his cheek and along his jaw. “Aside from your beard, which I assume my caretakers made you trim. The wild look becomes you more.”

  His gaze slid to the guards, and he began to wish he hadn’t objected to dismissing them. He didn’t need Daleina’s candidacy complicated with gossip about him, but maybe that was foolish, maybe it was too late for that—as the candidate of the disgraced champion, she was bound to attract talk anyway. “I can’t imagine,” he said honestly. He had no idea where she was going with this conversation, but he kept his hands firmly clasped in front of him.

  She was standing close enough that his every inhalation was full of her perfume. She smelled like gardenias. He’d once brought her a bouquet of them that he’d picked from the southern forest. He’d had to elude a very irate tree spirit, as well as keep the branches alive enough for the journey—it’s not easy fleeing with a pail of water on one’s back. It hadn’t been one of his brightest ideas. She’d laughed at him but kissed him, and that had made it completely worth it. He’d been so young, as young as Daleina was now.

  “Even after your exile, after all you’ve seen, you are still so innocent.”

  He raised both his eyebrows. He didn’t know what game she was playing, but he could play too. Slowly, he let his eyes rake down her from her face to her neckline, to her waist, to her legs, hidden within the folds of her gown but still so beautifully long, and then back up.

  She laughed, a light sound like bells. “Not that kind of innocent. You believe in the inherent goodness of people, whereas I know better. There are precious few who are suitable to be queen. Do you truly believe you have found one?”

  He knew this was the kind of trick question he’d warned Daleina to avoid. But this was Fara—her laugh, her eyes—and he couldn’t lie. “Yes, I do.”

  She tossed her hands in the air and then stalked away with all the melodramatic emphasis of an actress. “See? Innocent. You know that’s not the answer I want to hear. And yes, I was spying on you before you entered. That’s the true interview, though I have to admit your Daleina was charming in person. Typically candidates are so intent on themselves that it never occurs to them to think of me as anything other than a representation of the duty they may someday perform. But you . . . You come here, to the palace, with a candidate, knowing full well I could declare you both traitors and have you killed within seconds, and no one would doubt my right or even dare question me. You placed your life and the life of an innocent child—for that’s what she still is, for all her training—in the hands of someone who has betrayed you before. Why do you continue to trust me?”

  It was a real question—from Fara, he sensed, not the queen. He blinked for a moment, trying to formulate an answer. He should be angry at her, for what she did to him, for what she allowed to happen to those villages, for what she was trying to do now, showing off her strength when she knew—had to know—that it was ebbing. But he wasn’t mad. He wasn’t sure what he was, but it wasn’t angry. And so he answered the only way he knew how.

  “You’re my queen.”

  Fara looked at him from across the throne room. “Leave us,” she told the guards again.

  This time, Ven didn’t stop them. She was his queen, and either he trusted her or he didn’t. Given their past, he recognized that “didn’t” would have been the more logical choice. He waited until the guards shut the door behind him before he said, “I know there aren’t traitors in those towns. I know your control is slipping. The spirits are breaking your command, and you can’t stop them, even when you can predict them. That’s why I chose to take on a candidate. Not because I don’t trust you, but because I don’t trust them. The spirits will kill you someday, and I won’t let everything you’ve built and done be destroyed when that happens.”

  “How long have you been wanting to say that?”

  “Since you exiled me.”

  “Touché.” She regarded him, a look somewhere between amusement and shrewdness. “So you are my faithful, loyal servant, fulfilling your duty for the sake of Renthia.”

  “Always.”

  “Then prove it. Show me how loyal you are.” She reached up behind her neck, and he heard a clasp unsnap. Her gown slithered off her shoulders, over her breasts, down her waist, hip
s, and legs, to pool at her ankles. She was naked beneath it, and her perfect body seemed to glow like the sun.

  He crossed to her, cupped her breasts in his hands, and kissed her as if she was the most precious treasure in all of Renthia. Because she was . . . even though he spent every day and night preparing for her death.

  AFTER SURRENDERING THE LOVELY GOWN AND EXCESSIVE RIBBONS, Daleina trudged out of the palace to where Hamon and Bayn waited for her, on the lower bridge. “Well?” Hamon asked.

  Bayn growled, ending in what sounded like a question mark, as if he wanted to ask Daleina as well but lacked the jaw shape to form words.

  Kneeling, Daleina put her arms around Bayn’s neck. She noticed that people on the bridges around them were glancing at the two people and their wolf, but she didn’t care. She’d passed! Barely. She should feel more victorious and less like she’d been gripped in the jaws of, well, a wolf and then shaken. “Ven’s still in there. She wanted to talk to him.”

  “But what about you?”

  Daleina laughed, shakily. “I made a fool of myself.”

  “Oh. Daleina, I’m sorry. I know how hard you worked—”

  She waved her hand, shooing away his words. “I can do the trials. But it would have been nice if I hadn’t turned into a mess of babble in front of the queen. It’s only that . . . she’s a person, like me. She started as a student, became a candidate, then an heir, and then queen. Same path I’m supposed to be on. But the difference between her and me . . . Have you ever seen her, Hamon?”

  “I’ve not had that honor.”

  “You feel like you’ve been granted an audience with the sun. I won’t ever be like her. She’s as if you took every woman in Renthia, plucked out their best features, and compiled them into a single person.”

  Hamon laid his hand on her shoulder. “Meeting the queen is supposed to be intimidating.”

  She knew that. The palace, the throne . . . It wasn’t so different from the show the headmistress put on when she welcomed students into the academy. It was all designed to reinforce the power hierarchy. But knowing it was a show and not reacting to it were two very different things. “I felt fifteen years old again, pretending I belonged in the academy, knowing I’d never measure up.” She buried her face in Bayn’s ruff, certain that her cheeks were blushing a brilliant shade of red. “Hamon, what if I’m not meant to do this? What if I’m just stubbornly clinging to a childhood dream that I should have outgrown years ago?”